The Bee

"The word is 'trouble.'"

The synapses in my little second grade mind were firing away making connections with words I knew I knew. "Trouble rhymes with bubble and I know how to spell bubble. Yes! I know how to spell this one. This one's easy."

"TROUBLE," I said confidently. "T-R-U-B-B-L-E. Trouble"

"Incorrect."

Walking away I distinctly remember thinking "This language is messed up."

Despite my early encounter with the frustrations of English spelling, English was actually one of my best subjects growing up. I enjoy writing, and I love reading even more. I always received good grades on spelling tests because I could memorize fairly well. It's unfortunate my memorization retention was not super. I think I love and rely on spell check too much anymore. I've definitely become lazier and lazier about spelling as the years go by.

Because I minored in Spanish, I had the opportunity to learn a language in my adult years from scratch. After doing so, my loathing of English spelling, conjugation, and grammar has increased. I've decided that we should just throw out all the old spelling rules and create new rules with few to no exceptions. We could call the language "American." We'd speak the same, but the spelling would reflect the actual pronunciation.

I guess it's too bad that pronunciation varies from state to state and region to region. It wouldn't do, I guess to spell "oil" "erl" just because my grandma pronounced it that way. (Not "Far," my grandpa said as he was helping me with my 4th grade rock collection. "Far agate. No, no. Not far, far. F-I-R-E...far. If you're going to spell it, spell it right." Maybe I should have said, "But Grandpa, if you're going to say it, say it right!" No, that would have been a bit too cheeky.)